BU-103: Global Battery Markets

Learn about different battery systems, explore future trends and discover which chemistries are most promising.

According to The Freedonia Group, a Cleveland-based industry research firm, the world demand for primary and secondary batteries is forecasted to grow by 7.7 percent annually, amounting to US$120 billion in 2019. The real growth lies in secondary (rechargeable) batteries and according to Frost & Sullivan, secondary batteries account for 76.4 percent of the global market, a number that is expected to increase to 82.6 percent in 2015. The demand is driven by mobile phones and tablets. Earlier estimations over-estimated the demand for electric vehicles and the figures have since been adjusted downwards.

In 2009, primary batteries made up 23.6 percent of the global market and Frost & Sullivan predicted a 7.4 percent decline by 2015. Non-rechargeable batteries are used in watches, electronic keys, remote controls, toys, flashlights, beacons, and military devices in combat.

An Overview of Battery Types

Batteries are classified by chemistry, and the most common are lithium-, lead-, and nickel-based systems. Figure 1 illustrates the distribution of these chemistries. At a 37 percent revenue share, Li-ion is the battery of choice for portable devices and the electric powertrain. There are no other systems that threaten its dominance today.

Lead acid stands its ground as being a robust and economical power source for bulk use. Even though Li-ion is making inroads into the lead acid market, the demand for lead acid batteries is still growing. The applications are divided into starter batteries for automotive, also known as SLI (20%), stationary batteries for power backup (8%), and deep-cycle batteries for wheeled mobility (5%) such as golf cars, wheelchairs and scissor lifts.

High specific energy and long storage have made alkaline more popular than the old carbon-zinc, which Georges Leclanché invented in 1868. Nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) continues to hold an important role as it replaces applications previously served by nickel-cadmium (NiCd). However, at a 3 percent market share and declining, NiMH is becoming a minor player.

New markets that further boost battery growth are the electric bicycle and storage systems for renewable energy, from which homeowners, businesses and developing nations are benefiting. Large grid storage batteries collect surplus energy during high activity and bridge the gap when the input is low or when user demand is heavy. (See BU-1001: Batteries in the Industrial Market.)

Advancements in Batteries

Batteries are advancing on two fronts, reflecting in increased specific energy for longer runtimes and improved specific power for high-current load requirements. Improving one characteristic of a battery may not automatically strengthen the other and there is often a compromise. Figure 2 illustrates the relationship between specific energy in Wh/kg and specific power in W/kg.

Figure 2: Specific energy and specific power of rechargeable batteries.
Specific energy is the capacity a battery can hold in watt-hours per kilogram (Wh/kg); specific power is the battery’s ability to deliver power in watts per kilogram (W/kg).

The best performing battery in terms of specific energy and specific power is the secondary lithium-metal (Li-metal). An early version was introduced in the 1980s by then Moli Energy, but instability with metallic lithium on the anode prompted a recall in 1991. Solid lithium tends to form metal filaments, or dendrites, that cause short circuits. Further attempts to solve this problem by other companies ended in discontinuing the developments.

The unique qualities of Li-metal are prompting manufacturers to revisit this powerful chemistry. Taming the dendrites and achieving the desired safety standard may be achieved by mixing metallic lithium with tin and silicon. Graphene is also being tried as part of an improved separator. Graphene is a thin layer of pure carbon with a thickness of one atom bonded together in a hexagonal honeycomb. (See BU-309: How does Graphite Work in Li-ion?) Multi-layers separators that prevent the penetration of dendrite have also been tried. New experimental Li-metal batteries achieve 300Wh/kg and the potential is much higher. This is of special interest for the electric vehicle. (See BU-212: Experimental Rechargeable Batteries.)

Last updated 2016-04-11

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Comments

..the batteries are very important.and i am thankful to those people discover this such thing:)

On April 30, 2011 at 7:49am

limeiyun wrote:

i plan to do a survey about the market of different types of batteries,so this web has a great help. thanks

On July 15, 2011 at 1:25pm

royce wrote:

In the first paragraph under “Advancements in Batteries”, is “pacific power” supposed to be “specific power”?

On October 10, 2011 at 1:10pm

Chase wrote:

Does anyone happen to have any raw data on the amount of AA batteries pour into Africa?

On November 29, 2011 at 5:55am

Godfrey wrote:

Hi, just recently bought your book; it wonderful!
I have a some questions for my school project: First, who holds the Lithium-ion patent and how come many companies do manufacture using this technology? Did the patent owner issue the manufacturing companies of this technology some kind of non-exclusive license? Second, which is the biggest company that manufactures the Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries?

On December 16, 2011 at 5:11am

Steven wrote:

Very interesting question, Godfrey…
Did you find other sources (website) where these questions are answered?

On February 14, 2012 at 3:13pm

Keith wrote:

Please be more specific what is meant by a primary and secondary battery.

On December 11, 2012 at 2:40am

NEXcell wrote:

Battery recycle becomes a big issue when the market is bigger and bigger.

On April 22, 2013 at 1:25pm

David Eisner wrote:

1. I agree with Keith: “Primary” and “Secondary” should be defined here, where they are

2. You write “Government incentives may be provided, but such intervention distorts the true cost of energy”. I would argue that because externalities (primarily anthropogenic climate change) are not reflected in the market price of fossil fuels, government incentives, by increasing the relative cost of fossil fuels, result in market prices that more accurately reflect the “true cost” of energy.

On November 18, 2013 at 6:45am

Daniel wrote:

Is Fig 2 (or 1-8) correct? It looks like it has been redrawn from Tarascon & Armand, Nature (2001), but the values on the y-axis should then correspond to volumetric energy density (Wh/l), not power density (W/kg). Should the differences in power density be this large?

On January 8, 2014 at 3:40am

Pradeep Chandra Pant wrote:

There have been talks about NaS, Zn air and Vanadium redox battery now. All claim better performance ans cycle life. Kindly throw some light on these vis-a-vis to Lead acid, NiMH and Li ion technology.

On January 8, 2014 at 7:14am

John Fetter wrote:

The pie chart shown above depicts the value of the batteries. Alkaline cost twice the price of lead-acid, lithium-ion cost ten times more. Expressed in ampere-hours, if starter batteries are 20 percentage point units, alkaline would be 7.5 and lithium-ion 3.7. Stationary lead-acid plus deep cycle adds up to 13, hence the lead-acid total, at 33, is still way ahead of the rest.

On January 13, 2014 at 11:20am

Charles Whitehead wrote:

l found the pie chart of battery sales interesting. Over which types of batteries are these taken and are they considering units sold, Ah, or $ sales volume?

On June 19, 2014 at 4:33am

Bhaskar Bachhav wrote:

Interested in Battery Information being an Electrical Engineer

On August 4, 2014 at 6:28pm

Edward wrote:

I am the battery engineer, i like battery

On October 22, 2014 at 2:09am

Daniel wrote:

Please insert references

On October 22, 2014 at 6:53pm

Edward wrote:

Bhaskar Bachhav let keep in touch, I am working in a battery company for many years.my email is zzrm316@163.com Edward

On October 29, 2014 at 1:27pm

Mahdy wrote:

this website has alot of good stuff in it, it helped me with my reasearch task that i have to do for SQA

On February 10, 2015 at 9:47am

David wrote:

Hmmm… quite enlightening, may be there should be more companies advertising on this site, especially those that provide materials for setting up battery manufacturing

On March 17, 2015 at 8:46am

Kamill osman wrote:

I have learnt more frm this am very thankful of your site i think there should me more inprovment on the marketing…?

On April 6, 2016 at 3:38am

Mayank Malaviya wrote:

I would like to know the testing profiles that need to be conducted on Li-ion cells to plot the dependence of the internal resistance of the cells on the temperature and depth of discharge.

On December 11, 2016 at 8:24am

Rick Chandler wrote:

I am trying to find the Battery for an ols Ever Ready cycle lamp.

Or an adaptor produced to take 2 C cells
https://rustybikebell.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/img_0746.jpg

Any idea where I can get one?

On March 24, 2017 at 9:37pm

abhse wrote:

what lifepo4 battery should i use for best results in electric vehicles all terrain vehicles?

On June 3, 2017 at 8:10pm

Filip from Berlin wrote:

Heavy, only 3% for NI-Mh… except my smartphone of course I used almost only Ni-Mh, buying normal battery is…. not smart. The energy needed (without the stuff the battery is made off!) is 500-times as large as the energy the battery gives back…

Single Scenario for a Duracell expensive Battery:

1.5 Volt, ~2,800 mAh = 4.2 Watt-Hours (4.2 Wh), Accus always work with “only” 1.2 Volt and the best IMHO are the Eneloop (1.2V/1950 guaranteed, up to 2.000 mAh per unit, they are not lying, others deliver weaker and do not print it… its a “LSD”-Accu, no, not that kind of acid^^ The 4th Generation of what later became Panasonic Eneloop in its “normal” version still got around 70% after 10 years, for sure after 5. Therefore they are always sold “ready 2 use”, they are loaded by solar power by Panasonic for example and than delivered over ten thousand kilometers to a large electric market in Northern Central Europe….

Low Self Discharge is new AND ~2,100 times reloading! The “lite” version even 3,000 times… its a strongly reduced variant since with todays technique we can only have: High capacity, high self discharge, quite low reloading cycles, this would be the “Eneloop Pro” (in black, looking nice, but not for me, if someone really has something run by 1 or more common 2 AA cells and needs the higher power, they have minimum 2,500 mAh, 85% remains after 1 year, and 500 loading cycles.

So really for strong things, I dunno… a gaming controller for a console?! (the original blocks are sometimes Ni-Mh themself or were in used Xbox 360 a guy once had 3-5 years ago, one set was a original accu, and the other could be played with cable connected, or this box to put in 2 x AA cells…

I use the “normal” one, the lite is just too extreme, and only worth in these packs, when I buyed my Panasonic basic loader I could choice for 4 accus including with it, different prices, but you can take 4 x lite for example,

not worth in clocks, or tv/dvd recorders remote controller? Maybe… but I see it this way, there could come every day a new electronic item into your house powered by Batteries, and than using accus is not only cheaper, but here you can be happy, its much greener^^ US has low electric prices, making it even much more saving than in Germany xD The cycles of modern are 100%, and not 1 loading of 25% or so….. no memory effect….

I use at my home Wifi Keyboard and Mouse, the telephone basic stations loads the 2 x AAA in the phone, its a panasonic phone too, but with cheap Chinese license made batteries with 550 mAh each and of course like above mentioned as much loading cycles as possible, the “only” 2 x 550 mAh @ 2 x 1.2V is not the problem, but here 2000 or 500 loading cycles makes a real difference if you are medium “talker”..!

Everybody should buy LED light saving bulbs and replace all batteries by very good accus Cuba managed to avoid a electrical collapse on the Island, with free lightning bulbs for private households, its a bit longer ago soo it was no LED, but the “usual” old ones with many things looking like a pipe-systeme, they can deliver light with 5 to 9 watt too… and have a very long life time compared to older ones

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